13: When You’re Not Sure What Matters Most

Written By Denisa Nica

What happens when several things matter at the same time?

Maybe you're carrying a decision you can't quite make, worrying about someone you love, or feeling responsible for more than you can realistically hold. If you're navigating an uncertain season and longing for a little more clarity, this episode is for you.

It all began with a notebook page covered in circles and a simple practice that revealed something I hadn't noticed before: there's a difference between what matters and what actually belongs in our hands.

In this episode, we explore:

  • why several good things can matter at the same time

  • the quiet way over-responsibility slips into ordinary life

  • one simple practice to help you discern what belongs in your hands—and what you can leave with God

If you're moving through a season of transition, feeling weighed down by responsibility, or simply longing to move through these late-summer days with a little more freedom and peace, I hope this conversation feels like a quiet companion.

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  • I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 13.

    This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet.

    If you’re not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady and true, you’re in the right place to keep walking anyway. Each week I offer a reflection and a simple way to faithfully walk one more step.

    I’m an author and spiritual director, and the founder of The Table— an online contemplative space shaped by a weekly rhythm, where women practice this kind of faithful living together, at their own pace, in the middle of their real lives and faith.

    I live in Spain, where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention, and the way I live inside my own life.

    This week, we’re talking about discernment, responsibility and what happens when life hands us more than one thing that matters at the same time. Listen in.

    One of the spiritual practices that has stayed with me over the years is something called the Examen. You may have heard me speak about this before.

    The prayer and practice of the Examen comes from Ignatius of Loyola, a sixteenth-century Spanish priest who founded the Jesuit order. At its simplest, it's a way of paying attention to your life with God. It's less about finding answers and more about noticing what is already there.

    A lot of people practice the Examen in the evening, as they pause and prayerfully look over the day. I’ve tried, I don't do very well with it.

    By the end of the day, I am usually too close to everything. If a conversation annoyed me at three o'clock, chances are it's still annoying me at nine. If something wonderful happened, I'm probably still riding the wave of it. So I need a little distance.

    So for me, a night's sleep does something that no amount of evening reflection seems able to do. I wake up and whatever happened the day before has settled into its proper place. Not always, but often enough.

    So most mornings I'll sit with a notebook and ask two simple questions. “What brought me joy” and “What bugged me?”

    I realize those aren't the traditional Examen questions, but over the years I've learned that they get me to the same place a little easier and faster. They’re more casual, every day language and so help me pay attention to my actual life from the last 24 hours instead of drifting into broader more abstract concepts.

    One early morning last week I was sitting outside with a cup of coffee and my notebook, working through those questions.

    At first it was exactly what I expected. A few things from the day before, some conversations, a walk, something that made me laugh, something that irritated me more than it probably should have. And then the page kept growing.

    I remember looking down and thinking that this was no longer an Examen. This was becoming a record of everything currently renting space in my head. A conversation I hadn't stopped thinking about, the appointment I still needed to schedule, a thing connected to September, a question I had been holding in prayer for weeks.

    At one point I tried to decide what belonged at the top of the page. That seemed sensible. Surely there had to be one thing that mattered more than everything else.

    But every time I settled on one thing, my attention wandered somewhere else. So I tried a different system. I started putting stars beside the important things.

    That, lasted right up until the moment I realized nearly everything had a star beside it. Which was not especially helpful.

    I put the pen down, a bit overwhelmed and discouraged. I stared at the olive tree in front of me for a while. When I looked back at the notebook, something felt different. I don’t mean on the page, but different in me. I wasn't looking at a list anymore. I was looking at a snapshot. A surprisingly accurate snapshot of where my attention had been living lately.

    Now, August may have something to do with that.

    There is something about this month that exposes whatever has been humming quietly in the background. Our normal rhythms are quite loose by this point in the summer. There's usually more space to think, to notice, to just be. Also, summer hasn't ended yet, but you can see the next season coming. September slowly starts peeking around the corner. Things you've postponed begin clearing their throats and reminding you that they're still there.

    The funny thing is that none of this had arrived that morning.

    The question wasn't new, the conversation wasn't new, and September certainly wasn't new. I was simply seeing it all gathered in one place. And as I sat there, I had the distinct feeling that I had been asking the wrong question.

    I kept trying to decide what mattered most. The notebook was showing me that several things mattered. When I looked down at the page again, I thought, "Well, no wonder."

    No wonder this has felt crowded lately. Not because I've failed some hidden test of discernment or because anything is terribly wrong. There’s just a lot here. A lot to care about and to hold.

    And through all this, one question slowly raised its curious head above that morning’s murky waters: What belongs to me?

    Because by that point it was obvious that several things mattered. None of that was in doubt. The question was whether all of it belonged in my hands.

    And I think that's where I get tangled. Not because I care too much, but because I start carrying everything I care about.

    The difference sounds obvious when I say it now. It didn't feel obvious sitting there with that notebook.

    Eventually I grabbed my pen and drew three big circles. I wish I could tell you there was some great spiritual insight behind this. There wasn’t. I had a messy page and my solution was elementary-school geometry. It made sense though.

    I wrote the word "Mine" in the first circle and started there.

    A conversation I needed to have, the decision that was mine to make, this next step in front of me.

    Then I drew two more circles. One I labeled “Others”, and the third one, “God.”

    What surprised me wasn't what ended up in each of them, but how much I had been holding onto, that never actually belonged to me in the first place.

    What made it a little tricky was that these things all mattered very much. There were people I love, things I hope for. Questions I genuinely want answered. The kinds of things most of us carry around without even realizing we're carrying them.

    I sat there looking at the page for a while. Nothing had changed, September was still coming, the unanswered question was still unanswered and the conversation still needed to happen.

    But something felt different. For the first time all morning, everything wasn't sitting in the same pile. And maybe that's what I needed to see.

    Not everything that matters belongs in my hands.

    I’m still thinking about the three circles, because they exposed something I hadn't noticed before. Then again, that's probably the whole point of the Examen. I imagine Ignatius of Loyola would be pleased to know that five hundred years later, it’s still working.

    The truth is, I'm quite willing to place something in God's circle and then continue carrying it around anyway.

    For a long time, I treated things that matter as the same question. What matters most? What deserves my attention first? What should I focus on?

    The question now is a little different: What belongs in my hands?

    So here's the practice this week.

    If you have a little bit of space, maybe make a cup of coffee or iced tea, sit somewhere quiet, and spend a few minutes with those two Examen questions. In the last 24 hours, or in the last week: “What brought me joy?” and “What bugged me?”

    Don't rush to answer them. Let yourself sit with them for a minute. Notice what comes up. Notice what keeps returning. Notice what seems to be taking up space in your attention.

    And if life is full and you don't have time for that, of if you simply want to jump ahead to the next step, take a piece of paper and draw three big circles.

    Label one “Mine, label another one "Someone Else’s and one “God's." Then start filling them in.

    The conversation you're carrying, the decision in front of you, the person you're worried about, the blah feeling, the question you wish you had an answer to, the errand, that pain in your right shoulder.

    You don't have to even fully know what it is yet, or to get it right. Some words may overlap in two or all three circles. That’s OK. You’re simply paying attention to what takes space.

    And then notice where it belongs. Which circle does it go into? I suspect you'll discover what I discovered: the circles are easier to draw than they are to live.

    I wish I could tell you I stopped carrying those things afterward. I didn’t. The page didn't give me answers. What it gave me though, was a different way of seeing.

    That not everything belongs in the same place.

    If you try this practice, I'd genuinely love to hear what it reveals for you. We’re not looking for the right answer, because frankly, I’m not sure there is one. What I’m more interested in, is what becomes visible when we tell the truth.

    The page is still covered in stars. I have three big circles now too, but there are still a lot of things that matter. I have a feeling there always will be.

    Nothing on it has been resolved, but it no longer feels like everything is sitting in one pile. Maybe that's enough for now. Not everything belongs in my hands. And not everything belongs in this season.

    May we have the wisdom to tend to what is ours and the courage to release what isn’t.

    Thanks for listening to episode 13 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this simple practice of noticing what you’ve been carrying and what might belong somewhere else helps you move through these late summer days a little lighter, a little more free, and a little more able to keep walking anyway.

    And if you find yourself drawing those circles this week, I’d love to hear what you discover. I always enjoy hearing from you after these episodes. Sometimes someone writes and tells me about their experience, something they noticed, or a small shift that happened whole they were thinking about a certain topic and paying attention. I love those conversations. They remind us that none of us are doing this alone.

    If you’re looking for a place to actually practice this kind of noticing and —not just once but as a way of life, —you can begin today with a 21-day guest seat inside The Table.

    It’s a quiet online space where you learn to stay with God in your real life and  where you don’t have to do that on your own. You’ll find the link in the show notes.

    Because the way you’re walking through this, is already forming something steady in you. If this episode resonated with you, you can follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you’d be willing to leave a rating or review, it helps more people discover Walking Anyway and join us here each week. And if someone came to mind while you were listening today, maybe send this episode to them too.

    As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com., or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica. I’d love to see you there.

    As you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you, and let that be enough for today. And just like light moving through a room— you don’t need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    As I sat with that page last week, I was reminded that wisdom isn’t always knowing what matters most. Sometimes it’s recognizing what belongs in this season, and what doesn’t.

    I’ll close with a few lines from Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” Thanks be to God.

    Thanks for listening, and I'll be here with you next time.

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12: What’s Holding Me This Summer